Gov. Chris Christie’s State of the State speech Tuesday, dominated by Hurricane Sandy recovery, was a strong repudiation of those — mainly in his own Republican Party — who say that “government is the problem.”

Specifically, Christie made several calls for the government, in Trenton and Washington, to do right by the October storm’s hundreds of thousands of New Jersey victims, from 346,000 families whose houses were damaged or destroyed, to an estimated 8,000 people who lost jobs, mostly leisure-related ones.

“That’s what an effective government can do. That’s what a determined people can do,” Christie said, specifically citing the effort to reopen permanently a washed out Route 35 in Mantalocking, a critical road for shore access, in just 10 weeks.

Citing public and private relief efforts to remove debris and restore utilities, Christie offered that government can help people, when it doesn’t get bogged down in rancor. This being a gubernatorial election year, Christie was nonetheless smart not to cite differences with the Democrat-led Legislature. It would have diluted his we’re-all-in-this-together message and his own solid post-Sandy performance.

He said too little, though, about the path forward from the hurricane. What if New Jersey’s chunk of the $51 billion in federal aid that has been promised but not passed by Congress isn’t forthcoming? Should some shore properties not be rebuilt because they’d likely be struck down again by another storm? What other state priorities must be altered in Sandy’s wake?

Yes, the budget message comes later. But it’s not too much to ask for a road map now.

Democrats after the speech were left scrambling to point out the state’s choppy fiscal waters without sounding petty or parochial. It’s true that the state’s unemployment rate began lagging the nation’s by about two percentage points well before Sandy hit. Property taxes are still too high, and last year’s 1.7 percent increase, lauded by Christie as “the lowest rise in two decades,” is still an increase.

Christie is right to stress the need for bipartisanship in rebuilding efforts. Declare an us-versus-them moratorium, geographically and politically, on them. But the governor must avoid wrapping himself around this storm to deflect realities that don’t have much to do with it.